Minutes from 6/17 Conference Call

[Gillian Javetski]

Hi everyone,

Below are the notes from today's conference call. You can also find them at the following EtherPad link: http://openetherpad.org/F7yUBU1omI .

Thanks to everyone who helped out with the minute taking!

Best,
Gillian

*****

AGENDA TOPICS:

• comparing TinyGames[1], Karma[2], eXelearning[3], Squeakland/Waveplace Courseware[4] etc

• how to get up-to-speed today, delivering bite-sized curricular content to schools/kids that require it

• To keep our Agenda realistic, we'll not try to unify all curricular content / digital frameworks in 1 hour!  But instead: review where we stand here in 2010 -- and where we want to be in 2011 -- towards bringing meaningful digital/constructivist/open content into many more teachers' and students' lives.

ATTENDEES:

• Virtusa staff who spurred the call: Chamindra &~5 others  - http://Sahana.lk FOSS Disaster Mgmt System, Director & CTO; http://Virtusa.com Head of Strategic Initiatives
• Virtusa colleagues invited: Mohammadu A, Ramesh M, Mihirani G, Kasun Chandana J, Isuru W, Dimansu P, Hasitha A, Ashan K, Shrinivas K R
• Mike Dawson - Founder of OLPC Afghanistan, core developer/maintainer of http://eXelearning.org (now at http://paiwastoon.af/eldep )
• Tim Falconer - Runs Immuexa Corp & http://Waveplace.org Foundation, coordinates eToys Courseware, spearheaded http://realness.org Caribbean Summit
• Christoph Derndorfer - OLPC Austria founder, OLPCnews.com co-editor, worked on Karma in Nepal in 2009
• Flint O'Brien - Content framework entrepreneur, seeding http://OpenLesson.org, http://HungryLearner.com & http://GoodSchoolz.org, likes Common Core :)
• Caroline Meeks - http://ActivityCentral.org educ advisor & Sugar Labs entrepreneur, working w/ David Farning seeks to open up http://www.renlearn.com/products.aspx "like Moodle did to Blackboard"
• Beth Santos - Waveplace.org Mentor in Haiti and Sao Tome, Outreach Coordinator
• Caryl Bigenho - Retired Teacher, OLPC Support Volunteer
• Gillian Javetski - Tufts University / UNDP / OLPC Intern
• Josh Gay - http://CK12.org e-textbook design coordinator
• SJ Klein - OLPC Director of Outreach & Content, Wikipedia Board Member
• Adam Holt - OLPC Community Support Manager

SUMMARY MINUTES:

• Sri Lanka Group:
  

• Virtusa hoping to help Sri Lanka (Ministry of Education, OLPC rollout)

• Chamindra reviewing company helping OLPC with QA, looking to Karma, Game Development?

• Struggle in Afghan schools (Mike Dawson): kids don't have enough time, homework isn't being marked, no access to feedback.

• eXe system (http://paiwastoon.af/eldep formerly at http://exelearning.org) that digitalizes whole mined curriculum. Includes multiple choice quizzes, band more interactive options. Graphica luser interface, point and click selection of options. Can export directly to xol files and XO. 

• It's hard to author within Sugar, so use normal windows/mac/linux environment and run eXe there to create files/activities/modules. The result will be just html and javascript. Run on any platform that has a we browser. 

• Collect data on backend to see effectiveness? Fine-grained curriculum taxonomy/ecology? Typing lessons to curriculum (prototype coming next month)

• when  you want to run eXe on another machine running sugar, how do you do it? which machine do you author it on?

• It's hard to author within Sugar.  so use nrmal windows/mac/linux environemnt, and run eXe there, to create the files/activities/modules.  the result will just be HTML and JS, you can run them on any platform that has a web browser.

• Flint: OpenLesson.org learning environment and open API (like Flickr). 

• A place for games/assessments/lessons apps to store and retrieve data (student info, start/end time of lesson, assessment results, game scores, etc.), all tied to fine grained curriculum.

• For example: search for lessons/games/assessments that teach the associative property of multiplication.

• Identify the academic effectiveness of each lesson/game .

• Identify how a specific student is doing in the curriculum (to a teacher, parent, or student) and recommend remediation.

• SJ:  you are building your own fine-grained curriculum standards? other groups do this, so you don't have to start from scratch.  Some states have very precise breakdowns.  Also some countries -- France has a day-by-day breakdown of what should be covered in some classes.

• Flint: No. We want to find one to use, but haven't found one.

• JGay speaks:  we at CK12 just implemented a 2300-term taxonomy.. why? others weren't fine grained enough.  it's Driven by state+natl standards... should  be freely available to all (just contact him).  

• Curriki uses a data set pulled from state standards..  You align to a language of specific state standard.   Common Core not a unique taxonomy, but rather 8 overlapping ones... 

• About CK12: a California non-profit working on two projects: 

• 1) creating free+open textbooks (Creative Commons Share-Alike license; 15 sci and math student books and 35 total student/teacher/in-development books so far).  Starting for the US.  dealing with 50 state-standards -- helping to identify how each book maps separately onto many different standards; hence using this 2300-term taxonomy which is finely enough grained to describe ~all of them.

• 2) CK12 also creating a web-based platform.. download+use of books, allowing mix+match+edit+add of chapters.. Sharing/publish options encouraged! "publishing" means submitting some work, that was previously either public or private, for CK12's workflow -- for editing, cleanup, standards alignment, distribution, etc.

• Regular releases; 5 so far of Algera 1.  By this fall: should have 50 books in all.

• Flint: Have you seen github ?  Josh: yes; may use it for CK12's backend; something simpler for the frontend editors.

• Chamindra: Web-posted books?  

• Josh: HTML and PDF, yes.  not interactive yet; just embedded videos.  talking to Mike Dawson about eXe future possibilities..

• Mike: It would be great to export something from Afghanistan to the US :)

• Tim Falconer: Squeak/eToys Coursewear. Also powers Scratch, robust, spent three yeras workiong on this; not just a programming environment: 

• http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/wp/Courseware

• http://wiki.squeakland.org/display/wp/Basic+Etoys

• http://www.etoysillinois.org/library.php

• http://squeakland.org/showcase/everyone/?viewBy=subject&pageTop=23

• Waveplace tutorials: http://waveplace.org/resources/tutorials/

• Etoys: 

• Holt: Etoys idea: fully interactive + open. Interact with everyone you see on the screen at any time, allows for student interaction around puzzles. Challenges suggested in a freeform way. 

• Waveplace pilots foster the "Try this" approach rather than scripted curricula. 

• Many educators making these projects (inverse to Scratch)

• Caryl: need a central directory for all of these

• Holt: Central repository. Playlist, e.g. 4 Math Arizona versus California. What does the teacher need to use when? Need view of whole class, with 50+ kids in class. 

• Openlesson.org 

• Teachr.org 

• MDawson: Library.ole.org 

• Christopher D: We need someone/some organization which starts curating existing content and checking whether it works for OLPC projects. 

• CMeeks: a lot of projects have potential to provide feedback in standards-based way. Content library should be powerful scaffolding for collecting data. We could crowdsource and impressive collection. 

• Chamindra on Minister of Education in Sri Lanka: 

• Have neccessary requirements... around what solutions we can build. 

• Solutions not constrained to OLPC/many second hand machines in schools (not OLPC's XO laptops)

• Mike Dawson: If you make content without OLPCs, kids and families in developing countries often have to get private tutoring. Cost effective solution can be a computer, rather than paid tutoring and mentoring. 

• SJ: On behalf of Chris, many believe in providing paper solutions and cheap ways to turn digital activity into a handout. 

• Sometimes not always the cheapest option for schools. 

• Chamindra: focus on distribution, good education commercial packages on Windows, Learning Company, etc are effective. 

• Holt: How do we build a gradual learning ladder? Interactive books? eToys sparked by teachers? Move experts into open-source way? Constructionist, not spoonfed learning (i.e. Reader Rabbit is bad)

• CMeeks: Need to be informed by the research of the last 20 years. 

• Chamindra: Need a child psychologist?

• SJ: Need research, style guidelines for game makers?

• Dawson: Quality versus quality. Need clear research guidelines (with feedback delay) for non-pedgagogical experts. Catalysts can bring efforts together. 

• Holt: Community barometer to complete these quizzes/games/contet/etc. 

• SJ: Particularly if there's adequate reward/status for people contributing. Would love to see a central index. Concerned arguements will arise about "right metrics."

• CMeeks: Bake in way to measure activities' effectiveness. The publis/status recognition we need --> game authors will learn to make programs more effective!

• Holt: Before effectiveness of individual pieces, different groups will have different approaches to different audiences. 

• SJ: Need curators who provide good anecdotes, good collections from different sources. 

• Teefal: Some EToy Links: 

• See terrific eToys movie: http://squeakland.org/resources/audioVisual/#cat547. 

• All Schools in three counties/NSF funded for three years with assesment: http://useitproject.org

• This year's squeakfest: http://squeakland.org/squeakfest/about/

• Middle School teacher from NC: http://squeakland.org/resources/audioVisual/movie.jsp?id=49
  

• Mike Dawson: Anyone have a reason why OLE library can't be in central index?It can host etc, and get to school servers? Anything else closer than that? It could link to / curate squeakland showcase, &c.  http://ole.library.org

• Tim F: we won't get around having a lot of 'repositories' so what about thinking of this in terms of [human] curation of material?  having people identify great collections, pointing out to the individual repositories?

• SJ: I'm thinking more of an aggregator with human input than repository. 

• Chamindra: curators could index the games by category, age group etc.  make the result searchable (across repos).  specific 'day 1/2/3 lessons' pulled from many places.  interface like iphone/android app libraries?

• SJ: I have some reasons why the current OLE library interface doesn't work for me.  What I need to suport the curation I have in mind is:

• editable and renamable items

• casual curation tools - more than moderated comments!  

• the ability to categorize, 

• the ability to create summary/collection nodes that include other specific items

• freeform commenting and annotation, not moderated comments

• simple ways for teachers to copy materials they already have en masse into the system, and to do the curation casually in short blocks of time; don't wait for 'admins' to curate.

• CMeeks: like PBS TeacherLine?http://www.pbs.org/teacherline/  

• Lots of work went into the site above!

• Holt:  there have been some amazing ideas from tim falconer over the past few days(on the list for the people at realness) Do people want to think about next steps for a couple of minutes?

• CMeeks: who got the big grants already? are they interested in us and our problems?

• SJ: Josh Gay counts.  Josh, do you care?  

• Josh: yes, we care... we're privately funded, interested in such issues.

• SJ: Connexions (CNX.org and Curriki are likely interested, but can be inflexible in terms of interface; they are in the middle of 5 year plans, and don't generally like to try a dozen different new things.  Larger projects also have elaborate database structures, layered internationalization etc... all for good reasons, but it makes experimentation harder.

•  They're open to input, our conversation if we do this right should definitely reach out to them and involve ppl from those projects. 

• Mike Dawson: fair amount of activity on new tinygames.org group & their mailing list..

• http://groups.google.com/group/tinygames

• http://groups.google.com/group/tinygames?pli=1

• Lets use  certain of our best tools today -- can attract others to our cause

• Holt:  agreed, tinygames has been a very interesting place.

• Mike Dawson: we can use Karma to make Javascript / eXe games!   customizable.

• Farning said something similar recently - that many of these efforts would succeed in working together.

• Javascript: eats a lot of batter power on OLPCs, still a concern? Javascript CPU usage is an issue, have to be careful with testing. 

• Are there any programming techniques to minimize impact of game?

•  Put animated items inside an iframe so the browser doesn't worry about things outside. Jquery = no need to hack refresh rate. Putting stuff in iframe is clipping the paint area in Java 1. Unfortunately, most of area is used in games we have developed so far. 

• Mike Dawson: eXe's falling object game shows technique, only one that works. 

• SJ: We need more flash folks here (5-6 years building JQuery etc). Need more interface designers who write in JQuery and in flash. 

• Mike Dawson: big problem with Javascript is no animation GUI framework. Has a prototype coming this weekend. Will have point and click entrance effect, animation, adn extit effect generation.

• SJ: Flash interface designed templates are very advanced.

• Is there an open source flash engine (gnash?) Yes, but the templates/game creation engine?

• Concluding thoughts: 

• Publish what is on log, post to everyoen else first. 

• Caryl: Has an idea for a "repository," will write it up tonight and send out to all via email

• Something to bridge the flash gap: http://www.paiwastoon.af/exeplugins/Screenshot-14.png

• Mailing List for future discussions, something about tinygames, iaep, &c

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

Sorry I missed this. Looks like it was a good discussion. My feedback:

1. Please consider Common Core very seriously for alignment of
activities, whatever mechanisms we go with to create those activities.
An effort to curate open math content based on common core, for
example, would be *incredibly* useful, and is something I'm hoping to
work on for OER Commons here at ISKME.

2. Pay attention to Smokescreen. While I will grant that Flash has a
better authoring environment, it requires all potential developers to
have Flash tools. Because Smokescreen converts Flash to HTML5, it
allows for very interesting possibilities for key issues like activity
localization.

3. The purpose of Tinygames is to align browser-based (therefore, in
theory, ubiquitious) learning activities to specific learning
objectives. We're not doing a great job of it so far, but the path is
clear and achievable, I think, in small increments -- it's a very long
game, and once those activities exist, are aligned (therefore useful
to teachers) and *open*, we have a commons that cannot be turned back.

--g

[MaryAnne Gucciardi]

Hi Greg,   I ask if you can change my email to mguc...@gmail.com.  I have been having too many problems with Yahoo.   Thanks so much.   Best,   MaryAnne Gucciardi 919 260 9779 --- On Thu, 6/17/10, Greg DeKoenigsberg <greg.deko...@gmail.com> wrote: